Top 5 support Warframes for Steel Path (2023)

Many of the eponymous hero characters in Warframe fit into MMORPG class archetypes. Admittedly, though, there is a scarcity of healers and supports. The most efficient way to play Warframe is to simply find easier ways to dispatch enemies and pick up loot, and a good deal of the characters actually excel at obtaining this goal solo. Frames like Baruuk can dish out sufficient damage while staying alive indefinitely to collect the harvest, eliminating the need for allies.

In Steel Path, however, things can get dicey. The enhanced numbers, damage, and defenses of the enemy means your regular builds will often fall short on either damage, survivability, or efficiency.

Unsurprisingly, here is where the so-called 'support Warframes' shine. In a squad, they can make Steel Path much more bearable for their teammates, who can in turn compensate for their often lackluster mob clear capacity and speed.

5 best support Warframes in Steel Path, ranked

5) Trinity

Trinity is the legacy support Warframe released at a time when it was hard to heal consistently in the game. The restorative powers the developers bequeathed to her were invaluable in those early days, and Trinity surprisingly continues to be relevant even today.

Trinity has it all—healing, energy regeneration, and damage resistance buffs for her whole squad. Even though the current landscape of Warframe presents many alternatives to achieve these goals, Trinity remains the most comprehensive solution to enable resource-hungry builds with low ability efficiency.

Moreover, her ability augment mods now allow you to gain other benefits in the Steel Path. Abating Link makes Link strip armor fully at 166% ability strength, while Champion's Blessing grants her a decent weapon buff with a 350% critical chance.

4) Wisp

Barring Wukong, Wisp is the most popular Warframe in the game for good reasons. The usage statistics favor equipment and characters that make gameplay easier, and Wisp is a natural fit for this criteria.

Wisp's bread-and-butter support skill is her Reservoir. This skill consists of three sub-skills on three motes. These individually grant you a defensive buff with Health regeneration, an offensive buff with fire rate, and a utility buff with area-of-effect crowd control through shock status.

The Health mote alone grants a flat amount of additional Health. At decent ability strength, this buff can alone grant enough squad-wide sustain for squishy frames to stand on their own in Steel Path.

In endurance runs, a skillful Wisp can stay alive with the passive ability to become invisible while airborne. On the flip side, Wisp can also decimate clustered enemies thanks to Breach Surge.

3) Citrine

One of the newest support Warframes, Citrine is an underrated gem. In the hands of a player who knows her kit, she parallels Wisp in terms of total squad-wide utility.

Just by staying alive, Citrine grants herself and all other Warframes in a 50m range the Geoluminiscence buff. This is a Health regeneration aura that starts out at a measly +5 Health per second but increases permanently up to +25 Health per second when Citrine collects Health orbs.

Citrine's biggest claim to the support role is a squad-wide damage mitigation aura. Preserving Shell grants herself and her allies a damage reduction buff that can scale up to 90%, stacking multiplicatively with other sources of damage reduction.

On the other hand, Citrine also has built-in damage-boosting capabilities. She is the only Warframe capable of both priming enemies for Gun-CO through Prismatic Gem and enforcing red crits through Crystallize.

2) Harrow

Harrow takes overall higher skill to execute properly compared to the rest of the Warframes on this list. However, once you get used to his kit, he is also the most fun and comprehensive support on the Steel Path.

While other support Warframes make you tanky with some form of damage reduction or protective layer, Harrow makes his squad straight-up invulnerable. Harrow himself can obtain another form of invulnerability even outside it by virtue of shield gating.

On a proper build with Rolling Guard, Harrow has complete coverage with two different instances of invulnerability on top of an easily refreshable shield gate.

Additionally, Harrow outdoes the energy sustain benefits of Energy Vampire by casting Thurible near an ally. This alone enables some nuking frames to go ham with their damage abilities.

1) Styanax

Styanax is not a support frame per se, as his default kit is completely focused on withstanding and returning damage. His presence on this list is solely due to an ability augment mod, Intrepid Stand.

Intrepid Stand can be easily purchased with 25,000 faction standing if you are on positive terms with New Loka or Arbiters of Hexis. Alternatively, you can buy it from other players for the going price of 10 Platinum via trading.

The Final Stand, Styanax's fourth ability, propels him into the air as he creates a vanguard of clones to hurl axios javelins at a select area. These javelins have the forced Bleed proc, meaning they are extremely effective against high-armor Steel Path targets.

Intrepid Stand makes it so that kills scored by this ability can generate Overguard for Styanax and his allies in affinity range. This is only 30 Overguard per kill on paper. However, on a proper build, the frequent enemy spawns in Steel Path will help Styanax almost permanently keep the entire squad topped off at the 15,000 Overguard cap.

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